"If we seek security rather than the realization of our abilities, safety rather than growth, then we will be accentuating and developing our capacity for fear rather than courage, and security will, paradoxically, always remain slightly outside of our reach." -- Michael Lynberg

The Long-EZ is extremely fuel efficient and can fly for over ten hours and up to 1,600 miles (2,500 kilometers) on 52 gallons (200 liters) of fuel.

The Long-EZ design plans.

Long-EZs flying in formation.

Pardon me, do you have any Grey Poupon?

Four of the Rutan-designed aircraft.

cherie writes: One day Greg asked me if I wanted to see the plane that he built. Imagine that your boyfriend builds a plane. Wouldn’t you like it to have a remote control? Wouldn’t you want to take his toy plane to the park and do remote-control loops with it over a lake and crash it into some kid’s kite? But what if your boyfriend (who normally builds computer networks) built a real plane and wanted you to get inside?

The line between brave and stupid gets a bit blurred here. If we land, I’m brave. If we crash, I’m stupid. Upon looking at the cockpit I could only laugh when I saw the plane was driven by a joystick. Only a guy could design a plane that maneuvers with controls just like his video-games at home. And there’s even a red button at the top of the plane’s joystick. When you press it you have to say: “We’re too close for missiles, let’s switch to guns.”

Being brave, I squeezed myself into Greg’s experimental plane and stared at a sign that read “Passenger Warning: this aircraft is amateur built and does not comply with Federal Safety Requirements for standard aircraft.”
Last year Greg purchased a partially built kit-plane called the Long-EZ. It’s a canard plane which means it looks like a mix between a hammerhead shark in the sky and some funky futuristic thing that only James Bond would fly. But the Long-EZ has been around since the big hair of the 80s. About 700 Long-EZs are currently registered by FAA in the United States.

Probably the most famous thing about the Long-EZ is its designer Burt Rutan. Rutan created the Voyager, which was the first aircraft to circumnavigate the globe without refueling. More recently Rutan designed White Knight, the aircraft that propelled SpaceShipOne (another Rutan design) into history by breaking the X-15 altitude record and winning the $10-million dollar X-Prize for being the first privately-manned space ship. SpaceShipOne rocketed pilot Brian Binnie 69.6 miles or 367,442-feet away from planet earth on October 4, 2004.

Greg and I are planning to stay a bit closer to earth with his Rutan-designed Long-EZ which can fly for over ten hours and up to 1,600 miles (2,500 kilometers) on 52 gallons (200 liters) of fuel. The home-built Long-EZ aircraft is extremely fuel efficient. In fact, when Greg and I travel in the plane we use less fuel than when driving in his car (and we get there twice as fast with no traffic!)

When the plane’s empty the Long-EZ weighs about 760-pounds or 345-kilos. If I’ve had a big breakfast, the plane weighs a bit more. The Long-EZ has a cruising speed of 160-knots or 291 kilometers-per-hour. The airplane goes way faster than Greg’s sailboat, which is currently for sale. In Greg’s world, faster toys win.